Table of Contents

Ideas so far

From email-

We have all the tools necessary - I regard it as something akin to
the character ownership/traits of Univeralis mixed with the challenge
mechanic of Baron Munchausen and the sentence/trouble/stones mechanics of
Do. What we also have is the wonderful TVTropes wiki if we use any of those
genres and adapt the tropes to audio.

Concepts to implement

These are ideas that we can turn into rules for the game that are either neat, thematic or will improve the overall fun, or listenability of the final radio play

Players start with coins similar to Universalis.

Players take turns buying game setup items - tenets such as setting, genre, style, whether or not to have a narrator

The player with the most coins at the end (ie the didn't spend much establishing the game) starts the game (and this will hopefully increase that player's investment of interest in playing)

A turn consists of writing dialogue - this being defined as either sound effects (sfx) or the more usual paragraph of spoken word (say, up to 3 or 4 sentences). Variations cost more (ie spend coins to have a lengthy exposition or monologue, or to have SFX and spoken word to establish a new location)

What happens in dialogue could possibly be determined by using a stone draw similar to Do - it could be good or bad for the character.

It's assumed a player writes dialogue for the character they previously used, otherwise they should pay a coin to write for another character.

Like Munchausen, players can challenge whoever's turn it is and what the dialogue is by paying a coin, which must be paid back if refused. I'm thinking that if a character trait is tapped for this, it counts as a coin.

You can challenge if you think the character is acting out of character as well as the usual Munchausen reasons (ie because it's fun). However, if the character was made by the player being challenged, they should get a bonus as they have a better idea of what the character is like. Maybe an additional coin.

New character are introduced with either their first dialogue, or by using a reference in someone's previous dialogue

New characters up to the number of players in the game cost less as it's assumed the players will be voicing them. Additional characters cost more as folk will have to be found to voice them, or players will have to put on accents.

Characters are written down with some traits that define them - probably on an index card. I'm assuming a coin for each trait. When traits are used in a turn, the player who uses that trait earns a coin.

Possibly characters have a minimum number of traits, possibly 2, and at least one of them must be a bad trait for that character (ie in Do terms, it gets them in trouble)

Refering to characters in a spoken word dialogue costs 1 coin if they haven't yet spoken in the scene/location but already existed - as that implies they are present. It doesn't cost coins to refer to characters already in the scene/location or to characters not yet created (because someone may not create them and they may never get dialogues of their own).

If you refer to a possible new character and every other player is sure they'll never create them - one of them may challenge your dialogue to make sure that your reference does not require a response, so you must reword the dialogue (e.g. making it passive voice).

SFX dialogues are used to establish scenes/locations. The foley for implied actions don't really count as “sfx” for the purposes of what defines a turn.

Using an SFX dialogue just sets the scene, not what characters are there. To do that you have to also spend additional coins to add some spoken word dialogue. Again it's assumed you'd be using the last character you used, unless you pay coins.